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Endless Legend is almost four years old already, but despite its age we’re still seeing continued development and content expansions being released from developer AMPLITUDE Studios. Most recently, there was the Inferno expansion, and generally Legend’s DLC library is growing to warrant one of our hallmark DLC buying guides. Which expansion packs are worth getting? What order should you buy them in? Whether you are brand new to the game or old hat veterans like me, we’ve got you covered.

Endless Legend is one of our favourite 4X strategy games. You should check out the others!

As always, remember that sales for DLC can be quite frequent, ranging upwards of 75% off in some cases, so make sure to keep that in mind when making a purchasing decision. This list is in chronological order of release, so that may affect potential sales percentages as well.

GUARDIANS (2015) - $9.99

Endless Legend's soundtrack has been praised by our community. Enticed by this success, FlybyNo has created 7 awesome new tracks totalling over 30 minutes of music to enhance your experience and enrich the game's atmosphere. Echoes of Auriga Album, composed and produced by FlybyNo The album includes the following tracks. Endless Legend's soundtrack has been praised by our community. Enticed by this success, FlybyNo has created 7 awesome new tracks totalling over 30 minutes of music to enhance your experience and enrich the game's atmosphere. Echoes of Auriga Album, composed and produced by FlybyNo The album includes the following tracks.

Highlights

• Adds in Guardians, massive super units capable with special abilities like teleportation, mind control, healing entire armies, and being a one-man wrecking crew.
• Legendary Deeds are added to each Era. Requiring special prerequisites, those who meet specific requirements like amassing strategic resources, winning battles against heroes, or building a massive city are granted very powerful unique rewards.
• Globally Competitive and Cooperative quests are introduced, adding in new reasons to be adventurous on the map and make political deals with allies and enemies alike.
• Legendary and Empire-specific Buildings are added to the Tech Tree. These grant large-scale bonuses or can help point Empires towards specific victory conditions that are best tailored to their play-style.

Is it worth it?

As with most 4X strategy games, DLCs for Endless Legend tend to be specialized on a particular design philosophy, or gameplay mechanic that needs an update or otherwise absent from the base game. However, Guardians is arguably one that caters to a wide variety of tastes, as it impacts short and long-term goals, map exploration, army composition, and build orders. Therefore, I’m comfortable considering it a core part of the game. There have been plenty of games where I never bothered using Guardians, but I almost always strive to be the first to achieve a few Legendary Deeds or rush some of the early game Legendary Buildings. These additions help each session of Endless Legend feel unique and mixes up how you might approach playing certain Empires.

SHADOWS (2015) - $12.99

Highlights

• Introduces the Forgotten, a new Empire that specializes in stealth, infiltration, and sabotage.
• Introduces camouflage, stealth, and pillage mechanics for heroes and armies traversing the map.
• Espionage allows heroes to infiltrate enemy Empires, stealing currency or technologies, disrupting building operations, or even assassinating governors.

Is it worth it?

Shadows is the quintessential spying expansion pack. If you enjoy espionage and messing with your friends, this is the DLC for you. The Forgotten cannot exploit Science from the map or cities, and instead purchase technologies outright with Dust. They can also outright steal technology from opposing Empires via infiltration, replacing the standard 'Decrease Science Production' option. This is a perfect example of a DLC that is focused on one sole gameplay mechanic. If stealth and spying is something you enjoy, pick this up, otherwise it’s not a hard and fast requirement by any means.

FORGES OF CREATION (2015) - FREE

Highlights

• IT’S FREE.
• Adds Steam Workshop and Map Editor compatibility.
• A new Sister of Mercy hero and Scythers, Guardian Killer specialized units, are added to the game.
• 20 new unit equipments are added, along with seven new custom faction traits.
• Overall AI improvements to Military, Research, Economics, and Diplomacy.

Is it worth it?

It’s free folks, it is unquestionably worth it.

Echoes of Auriga (2015) - $2.99

Highlights

• Adds 7 new tracks to the game’s overall composition.
• Adds 9 new unit equipments based on music motifs.

Is it worth it?

Musical taste is subjective. Personally, I find Way of the Forerunner to be one of my favorite ambient pieces to listen to. Heck, I’m listening to it right now as I write this! I would suggest giving the OST a listen on their Bandcamp site and making an informed opinion from there. If you like the pieces, support the game and musicians by making a purchase. If not, then pass on this. (I’m willing to bet you’re going to like them though, Endless Legend has fantastic sound design.)

The Lost Tales (2015) - $1.99

Highlights

• Adds 20 new quests based around the Minor Factions you can assimilate or battle over the map.

Is it worth it?

If you like quest variety and little lore bits here and there, then this is a minor purchase that’s worth your while. If you’re the type of person who skips over quest text and just looks for the immediate condition you need to fulfill, you may still want this just for some added spice and rewards from interacting with the Minor Factions. I tend to see at least two or three quests from this cache of content per gameplay session, so they are always around in some capacity. The Lost Tales is a very minor content expansion, but it also only requires a minor investment.

Shifters (2016) - $12.99

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Highlights

• Introduces the Allayi, a new Empire that specializes in map exploration and Pearl exploitation.
• A massive Winter revamp. Winters become gradually harsher as a game session progresses.
• Pearls of Auriga, a new resource, can be used to grant Empires protections against the cold and powerful bonuses during Winter.
• New buildings, unit equipment, etc. based around the Pearl and Winter motifs.

Is it worth it?

Shifters makes the Winter mechanic in Endless Legend go from being a tiresome waste of productivity to a strategic phase of the game with multiple layers of depth. It is unquestionably the most improved mechanic from the base game, and practically begs to be purchased. Each Winter you’ll have to consider if you want to focus on collecting Pearls that have respawned at various points on the map, and furthermore if you want to spend them on research, production, or unit upgrades. Their limited nature makes for interesting branching decisions, and the progressive harshness of winter adds a nice difficulty curve to round out the later stages of the game. The Allayi are designed to be tall in their city design, rather than expansion based, and instead allow heroes to extract value from the map indirectly. Shifters is a required purchase if you want to experience everything Endless Legend has to offer, the Winter revamp is just that important to the core structure of the game.

Tempest (2016) - $12.99

Highlights

• Introduces the Morgawr, a new Empire that specializes in naval combat, mind control, and aggressive diplomacy.
• Naval warfare has been updated with seaborne units and naval specializations.
• A weather system is introduced for ocean tiles, granting bonuses and potential danger to ships that pass through them.
• Sea Fortresses are added to provide strategic depth and purpose to controlling ocean sections of the map. Likewise, the Fomorian Minor Faction is introduced, which exist within these fortresses.
• New quests, new unit equipment, and a giant Kraken-esque monster to combat.

Is it worth it?

I want to tell you that Tempest is a strong buy, and that the naval mechanics it adds to the game are worth your consideration. My only issue is that it is almost too aquatic-based for its own good. For example, if you ever play on a Pangaea type of map structure, this DLC is practically empty in value during your play session. Sea Fortresses offer nice bonuses to your existing empire, but are they worth the time it takes to research naval units, alongside their maintenance costs and upkeep as you progress throughout the Eras? I struggle to see their value in most of my play sessions, and similar to the Guardians from the Guardians DLC, I find myself ignoring their existence more often than not. The Morgawr are fierce on the water but are otherwise merely passable on land. Their mind control of neutral armies and ability to un-pacify minor factions is an interesting idea on paper, but fairly innocuous in the grand strategy of things. The Black Spot is a new way of pissing off one faction by making them an enticing target to being attacked by others, but the AI often enough will still target you if you are a close and weaker target. Perhaps there’s more value in multiplayer sessions of the game. Overall, Tempest is really based on how much value you place in naval mechanics of 4X games. For me, it just isn’t really all that exciting.

Forgotten Love (2017) - FREE

Highlights

• IT’S FREE.
• Adds 2 new heroes with an intertwining story about one another.

Is it worth it?

Pretty straight-forward here, Forgotten Love was a minor content addon that was unlocked to celebrate the 'Make War Not Love 4' community event put on by AMPLITUDE Studios. It’s free, and the story of these two characters is interesting if you’re into reading hero biographies. No sense in not installing it.

Inferno (2018) - $12.99

Highlights

• Introduces the Kapaku, a new Empire that specializes in high amounts of production, dust eclipse mastery, and terraforming.
• Volcanic biomes are introduced to Auriga for the first time.
• Dust Eclipses offer every Empire a short-term, but powerful, unique boost tailored to their strengths.

Is it worth it?

The short answer is yes, and I happily explain why in my review. The longer answer is that this DLC offers you a new playable Empire that feels just as unique in play-style as its predecessors, without feeling too specialized to not work in general gameplay like the Morgawr. It also expands upon the weather system introduced from Tempest to encompass land tiles with varied kinds of Dust Storms. Likewise, drawing inspiration from the Shifters Winter revamp, Inferno updates the Summer season with Dust Eclipses that give new purpose to retreading previously explored ruins and offer powerful Empire-specific bonuses. I like Inferno because it is built upon the shoulders of its forefathers. As previously stated, small design philosophies from Guardians, Shifters, and Tempest can be seen within this latest offering from AMPLTITUDE Studios, and I highly suggest making the investment in this DLC as soon as it meets a price point you’re happy with.

Symbiosis (2019)

Highlights

• Introduces the Urkan, which are like the Guardians but better and more fun to interact with.
• Introduces the Mykara, a civilisation that follows brings the 'one-city' trope into the game in an interesting way.

Is it worth it?

As Endless Legend's final expansion, this finishes the game on a fairly high note. New content is focused around the introduction of a new giant unit, and a new civilization. The Mykara faction epitomise the ideal of 'single-city' civilisations or play-throughs, but actually make the archetype interesting and feel dynamic, as opposed to limiting. The Urkan are everything we wish Guardians could have been, and make late-game conquest wonderfully silly. It's not a huge expansion by any means, but it's definitely entertaining.

THE BREAKDOWN

ESSENTIAL:

1. Shifters
2. Guardians
3. Inferno

SITUATIONAL:

1. Shadows
2. Symbiosis
3. Tempest
4. The Lost Tales
5. Echoes of Auriga

FREE:

1. Forges of Creation
2. Forgotten Love

We hope this list helps you make an informed decision on how best to tackle getting caught up on all the additional content Endless Legend has to offer. If you need to prioritize, personally I recommend going in the above order from top to bottom (except for the free stuff, you should totally nab the free stuff). Thanks for reading and let us know about your favorite Endless Legend DLCs or any purchases you make in the comments below!

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Endless Legend is a turn based4X fantasy-strategy game developed by Amplitude Studios and published by Iceberg Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in September 2014. The purpose of the game is to dominate the world of Auriga with one of the fourteen races/factions through either diplomacy or war while developing new technologies, exploring new lands and founding new cities.^[1][2]

Endless Legend is the second game made by Amplitude Studios in their Endless series of titles, following Endless Space.

The game was later published by Sega after they acquired Amplitude Studios.

Gameplay[edit]

Endless Legend is a turn-based 4X strategy game, in which players take control of a fantasy faction to establish an empire through exploration, conquest, diplomacy and research.^[3] The game is set in the land of Auriga, with the layout of its landmass and ecosystems being randomized per game, represented on a model-like map made up of a hexagonal grid.

The map is populated with a variety of terrain, each made up of biomes within the world which have effects on the player's units. Tiles and their layout are all randomly generated to create a unique playable world with each separate playthrough.

Fog of war covers the play space requiring exploration by the player's units to find resources, minor factions, and races that players must utilize and exploit to benefit their growing empires.

However, unlike other 4X games, the world map of Endless Legend is formed of separate regions. Once a city has been established within the borders of a region for the first time, the entire region becomes part of a faction's territory and control. At the start of each game, each faction begins with a settler unit to establish their first city and region. Regions can only host one city each within their borders.^[4]

Faction[edit]

Players can choose from one of the fourteen available factions, each with their own unique characteristics including appearance, units, abilities and play-styles:^[3]

• Wild Walkers: Former forest dwellers who have harnessed magic to control and shape the natural world.
• Broken Lords: Knights of honor and chivalry who have lost their humanity, remaining as specters within their suits of armor.
• Vaulters: Great smiths and craftsmen who have lived in solitude underground for most of the history prior.
• Mezari: Space settlers who must adapt the best they can to Auriga's terrestrial conditions due to a loss of their ship and technology.
• Necrophages: A great hive mind of insectoid creatures that can spread plagues while infecting and controlling others.
• Ardent Mages: Sorcerers who warp their bodies and minds to achieve great magical power and sustained life.
• Roving Clans: Travelers and merchants from distant lands of a nomadic tradition.
• Drakken: An ancient dragon race whose longevity has made them a wise race of scholars and diplomats.
• Cult of the Eternal End: A fanatical cult that spreads influence on lesser races, mechanical in their appearance and thought, who wish to destroy the relics of the Endless, the advanced alien race that once counted Auriga among the planets under their possession.

The following factions have been added in game expansions (denoted in parentheses):

• Forgotten(Shadows): Survivors from a 'thought to be extinct faction' embracing the shadows by specializing into deception, infiltration, and sabotage.
• Allayi(Shifters): Ancient beings from the time of the Endless who change form with the seasons and hold a tight bond with Auriga.
• Morgawr(Tempest): Ancient underwater folk who rose from the depths of Auriga.
• Kapaku(Inferno): Emigrants forced from their volcanic homeworld who seek to transform Auriga into a 'paradise of ash and fire'.
• Mykara(Symbiosis): A race of fungal humanoids who arose with the newly awakened Urkans.

Resources[edit]

Faction controlled cities are used to generate resources, construct buildings and recruit armies. There are five different key resources each faction requires to remain stable and grow: food, industry, dust, science, and influence.

• Food is used to increase and sustain the population.
• Industry is used to produce units and buildings.
• Dust is the standard currency in Auriga.
• Science is used for research.
• Influence is used for empire level actions, in which the player gains boons like a boosted attack on units or additional resource gain. Influence is also required for diplomatic proposals with other factions.

Resources are gained through the properties on game world tiles within a city's border, buildings the player has constructed and research. How much of a resource a city can gather is dictated by a city's workforce, gained by its native population, which can grow.

Workers are the main tool for gaining resources. They are placed to collect certain resources for the player, with more workers on a certain task gaining more resources.

Research[edit]

Another aspect of Endless Legend is the progression of research. Research is cut into four areas within multiple eras. The four areas of research are military, science and industry, empire and expansion, and economy and population. Each aspect is intended to tailor the experience to the player and pushes toward that player's specific goal of victory.^[5]

Cities[edit]

Cities are where armies are raised. Armies are composed of individual units spawned by the player, with different units types having their own abilities and uses in combat. Players move armies through an action points system. Each movement and interaction subtracts one action point until the counter hits zero, at which point no further actions can be taken.^[3] The units are used for exploration, combat, diplomacy, and questing. Units in an army can be outfitted with different equipment researched and purchased by the player or found. Acquired equipment can change the statistics of a units to the player's liking. Armies can also include a hero, a powerful unit with the ability to gain skill points to temper the character to a player's playstyle.^[5]

Quest[edit]

Endless Legend also has a quest system where quests are found in the game world. Many of these are completed through the use of armies. Quests differ between factions and are the main source of story content throughout the game.^[4] Completing all of the player's chosen faction's quests is also one possible victory condition for a player. Armies can accomplish quests given by other faction for diplomacy points. Diplomacy is used to gain favor with other faction, and if enough influence points are gained alliances can be formed.^[4] On the other hand, a declaration of war between the player and another faction can also occur if a player helps that faction's enemy. Outside of both peace and war, all players begin in a state of 'cold war'.

Win conditions[edit]

There are nine win conditions in the game:

• Quest Victory: complete all of the faction's quests and the epilogue quest.
• Elimination Victory: No other faction is left alive.
• Score victory: having the highest number of overall points at the end of the 300th turn in a normal game.
• Expansion Victory: 80% of the map is claimed by a player.
• Economic Victory: in a normal game, 555.500 Dust has been collected by a player.
• Diplomatic Victory: in a normal game, collecting 3000 Diplomatic Points.
• Wonder Victory: complete all of the faction's quests and build the associated Wonder.
• Scientific Victory: the player must discover five of six technologies in the 6th era.
• Supremacy Victory: be the only remaining player in control of their starting capital.

Reception[edit]

Endless Legend received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Metacritic gathered an average rating of 82 out of 100 based on 35 reviews for the PC version.^[7] and GameRankings gathered a score of 83% based on 20 reviews.^[6]

PC Gamer US gave it an 89 out of 100 stating,'Amplitude Studios has created another astounding story-driven game, that really has taken the best bits of RTS, RPG, and 4X, drawing much from Endless Space, and spun it differently for every faction.'^[4]IGN commented, 'It combines style, substance, and setting into a marvelous overall experience for both empire management and tactical combat.' giving it an 8.3 out of 10 ^[10]GameSpot warned of passive and weak AI but remarked, 'Endless Legend's driving forces are so thoroughly executed that it serves as an imperfect, but well worthwhile step in the series, and hopefully a sign of things to come.' giving it an 8 out of 10.^[9]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun named Endless Legend Game of the Year in 2014.^[11]

References[edit]

1. ^Barret, Ben. 'Endless Legend's Early Access Not Endless, Ends Soon'. Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 8 October 2014.
2. ^Kaiser, Rowan. 'A Cartographer's Dream'. IGN. IGN. Retrieved 8 October 2014.
3. ^ ^abcCampbell, Colin (22 July 2014). 'Endless Legend seeks the perfect imbalance to keep players exploring and exterminating'. Polygon. Polygon. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
4. ^ ^abcdeGriliopoulos, Dan (14 October 2014). 'Endless Legend review - PC Gamer'. PC Gamer. Future. Archived from the original on 28 December 2014. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
5. ^ ^abParrish, Peter (6 May 2014). 'Endless Legend Early Access Preview'. incgamers. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
6. ^ ^ab'Endless Legend for PC - GameRankings'. Archived from the original on 9 December 2019. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
7. ^ ^ab'Endless Legend'. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
8. ^'Endless Legend - Test'. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
9. ^ ^ab'Endless Legend Review'. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
10. ^ ^abKaiser, By Rowan. 'Endless Legend Review'. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
11. ^'The Bestest Best Game Of 2014: Endless Legend'. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 24 December 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2015.

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